Are You?

I've made it a habit to call for Bea whenever Henry and I come home from school, errands, etc.  I tell Henry that we are going to go find Bea, and we run around the house in search of the dog.  I say "Bea, where are you?", and Henry gets pretty excited when he spots her.  Henry has picked up on this game and now applies it to whatever object we are searching for.  I'll ask him to go find his shoes/sippy cup/Blue Bear, and Henry says "Are you!"  It is pretty cute...

Christmas 2011

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!  Henry had his first Christmas in Concord, and we all had a nice, relaxing time.  We started with Henry's Christmas party at school where everyone got to wear their favorite Christmas pajamas (they really know how to party at Primrose!).  On Christmas Eve, we spent the day at the park and at home watching Christmas movies and checking out presents.  On Christmas morning we opened presents and checked out Santa's loot and spent a fun afternoon at Nana and Grandpa's house.  We even had some Facetime with my family in Greenville and Chapel Hill.  We had a great holiday!

December Discoveries

This is my first post of December, which I am pretty ashamed about.  I'm just going to blame it on holiday craziness and a toddler who will not sit still for pictures.  So here are a few things that have been going on this month:

Henry decided that he loves hats.  Henry has spent plenty of time indoors wearing his winter hat.  He has recently discovered how much fun it is to wear Daddy's hats too.  And our shoes.

Henry loves to go down slides all by himself.  This was a big step for him (and me).  And it is so much fun to watch Henry climb up the playground set and slide down completely without assistance.

Henry has learned some more words.  "NOOOOO!!!" and "Mine!!!!"  These are not my favorite words.

I am apparently married to Neil Diamond.  Henry was playing with my phone when a picture of a young Neil Diamond popped on the screen.  Henry immediately started saying "Dada, Dada, Dada!"  He also saw a picture of Ryan Adams and started making monkey noises...

Henry has grown like a weed!  My small and scrawny 12-month old is now an above-average 18-month old.  He weighs over 24 pounds (60%) and is 33 inches tall (80%).  This would explain why the buttons on all his overalls keep popping open.

Henry is quite the ladies man.  In just one day, we received pictures of Henry hugging and kissing on one girl in his class.  When leaving school that afternoon, we ran into a former classmate who was beyond excited to see Henry.  And at the grocery store, we passed by yet another classmate who started shouting "Henry, Henry, Henry!"  It must be the curls.  Every girl loves a guy with good hair.

Henry - 1.5

Henry is 18 months today!  He is getting to be such a big boy!  Here is whats going on in the life of Henry 1.5:

He loves all things books, balls, blocks and Bea.  He is a pretty good eater, but prefers fruit above anything else.  Henry loves to help with the laundry and gets mad when the dryer is empty.  He is super silly and knows it.  Henry has some pretty sweet dance moves.  He requests "ABCs" and songs from our baby yoga class constantly. When I sing the ABCs, he chimes in proudly at "C."  Bath time is one of his favorite times of day because he can play with bubbles.  Henry loves exploring outside and walking up and down our neighbors' driveways.  He can make animal noises and point to his nose, mouth, tummy, eyes, hair and toes. Henry really enjoys school and has a special place in his heart for Ms. Tomberlin.  He has very little patience and can make a pretty impressive pouty face.  He enjoys anything with buttons and makes lots of phone calls.  A current favorite activity is to pick up as much stuff at once -- puzzle pieces, books, balls, you name it.  He loves his Mommy, Dada and Bea more than anything.

And so I can remember, here is a list of some of his first words:

Bea
book
ball
bubbles (notice a theme?)
blocks
baby
Blue Bear (his lovey)
truck
nose
banana (pronounced no-nee and currently my favorite of his words)
Mommy
Dada
good girl (for when Bea does her business outside)
quack quack
roar
woof woof
peep peep (however, no noise comes out)
caw caw
baa baa
glub glub (fish noises)
Thank you (but not always used in the right context)
more (again, not always used in the right context.  I think he confuses it with "milk")
shoes
socks
bye-bye
cracker
that (as he points to EVERYTHING)

So HAPPY 1.5 BIRTHDAY to our little Henry.  Its been the best 1.5 years of my life too!

Thanksgiving

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving in Greenville with 9 adults, 6 kids and 2 sweet labs.  It was crazy and crowded and just what I wanted.  I don't think this Thanksgiving could have come at a more perfect time for our family.

And of course, what would a family get-together be without a cousin photoshoot?  Henry and Caroline weren't very pleased, but, hey, we tried. 

**It is amazing to see what a difference a year makes...

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

Thanks to Henry's fever on Monday afternoon, the two of us played hooky on Tuesday.  We had a fun day together, and you'd never know he was running a fever.  I decided to try a photo shoot outside since the weather was so comfortable.  We went to the park, and Henry had a fabulous time running/walking/stumbling around the soccer field.  He even went down the slide just holding my finger :)

Fortunately, I got a great shot for our Christmas card (which I've already ordered and received in the mail thank you very much).  Here are the rejected photos:

Happy Halloween - Quack, Quack!!

We started off Halloween with a party at school followed by a parade of the big kids.  Henry couldn't quite grasp what was going on and why the grown-ups were making everyone wear silly spider-man and princess costumes, but he warmed up toward the end.

We then headed to Nana and Grandpa's house for some pictures.  He did not enjoy his hat, so that didn't last very long! 

He really started to shine once we got outside and let him roam free.  Here are some pictures of our little duck:

ps - Henry did master the quack - "kak, kak!"

Doughnuts vs. Broccoli

About two weeks ago, Henry got to experience his first Krispy Kreme doughnut.  I'm a fan, Ryan is a fan, so I thought Henry would love it just as much.  Wrong.  He looked at his doughnut and then at me and wouldn't touch it beyond one bite.

Last night, Henry got to experience broccoli for the first time.  Henry has been quite picky in the veggie department.  So much so, that he will only eat green beans.  I sauteed the broccoli and added a dash of salt with the hope that Henry would at least take a bite.  The kid took it right down.

Broccoli beat doughnuts...who would have guessed?

**I'm sure that once I post this, Henry won't touch broccoli again until he is 30.

Fun Fall Saturday

We've had some pretty busy weekends lately, so we decided to take advantage of our completely free Saturday and visit Riverbend Farms to pick out a couple of pumpkins.


There was some seriously cute hand-holding

 Big boy sliding

 
 Goat watching

 And pumpkin picking

We got home just in time to watch the UNC game (unfortunately).  Here is what Ryan created out of his frustration:

Finally, we had to do a little yard work.

Overall, it was a pretty great Saturday!

The Duck Says "Moo"

We've been working on our animal noises lately.  Henry is going to be a duck for Halloween, so I thought it would be really cute if we could get him to quack in his costume.  So far, Henry can moo like a cow and roar like a lion.  Actually, many animals "roar" according to Henry.  He might not be quacking in two weeks, but I do know that he will be the cutest mooing duck you've ever met!

Henry is Walking!

Well, I'm going to say its official - Henry is walking!  It only took 16.5 months, but here we are!  We've been working on this for a few weeks -- a few steps here, a few there.  When I picked up Henry from school today, he stood up and stumbled over to me with the biggest grin on his face.  He was so proud!  He did the same thing when Ryan came home from work.  The best greeting ever!  So of course, we got a video (or two) to document his "official" first day of walking.  Dust off those running shoes!

Itsy-Bitsy Spider

Henry can do a mean Itsy-Bitsy Spider. 

Vocals by Sarah.  Produced by Ryan:

Goodnight Kisses

Henry hasn't much of a kisser.  We give him enough, but he's never show much interest in kissing you back.  Finally, we've received goodnight kisses from Henry the past two nights.  And such sweet, purposeful kisses.  Henry's lips close up into a tiny little "o" in a way that makes him look like a fish.  He sticks out his neck and waits to plant one on you.  They couldn't be more perfect.

It is these moments that remind me why I wanted to start (and maintain) this blog.  I want to be able to look back and remember how I felt during these sweet milestones.  To remember how my heart melted into a puddle on his bedroom floor. To remind myself how lucky I am that I have a wonderful little boy who gave me fishy-face kisses.

Warrior Dash!!

I've been wanting to start exercising for some time now, but it is hard when (1) you have a baby/toddler and (2) you're just plain tired.  Exercising is the last thing that I want to do when Henry goes to bed.  Besides, I'm pretty lazy.  So when my friend Kim suggested I do the Warrior Dash with her and her personal trainer a couple of months ago, I thought, why not.  A three-mile obstacle course sounds like the perfect thing to do when you haven't even run a mile in over two years (does picking up a baby all day long count as strength training??).

I downloaded a couch-to-5k program and got to work.  And I'm so glad that I did.  I grumbled and complained, but I still did it.  I would run about every other day.  Either on the treadmill after Henry went to bed or early in the morning on the weekends.  I knew I could handle a three-mile run by the day of the Dash.

The Warrior Dash was so much fun.  People dressed in crazy costumes (think tutus, smurfs and Lady Gaga).  Music pumped loudly and people cheered when Warriors crossed the finish line.  I climbed cargo nets, slid down a fireman's pole, hurdled dumpsters (clean ones), climbed over logs floating in some pretty foul-smelling water, jumped through fire and ended the event crawling through knee-deep mud.  So. much. fun.  And the icing on the cake was that I had Ryan and Henry cheering me on at the end.

I'm sore today, but so glad I did this for myself.  I think I'll sign Ryan up for it next year :)